Forest of Death

I can only hope my $5 rental was the only copy available and no other human will have to ever see this (this would be a better plot than this movie, even as a sequel to The Ring). Clearly I was the only one who actually watched it because there's a bunch of reviews insinuating it's watchable and not a complete hot pile of garbage. The actors all say the lines like they're reading them for the first time and have no idea what is going on. The one exception is the southern hillbilly redneck moonshiner (they couldn't decide on a stereotype), he was actually good. When the budget is so low you have to make a fake deck of cards out of printer paper, just don't make the movie.

There's indie films, and then there's whatever this is. I've googled DBS Films and I'm aware of how they operate. You'd think the whole "casting your fans" for EVERY ROLE is a bit of a misstep, but they keep doing it and it has not worked and it will probably never work. The writing is 3rd grade level and the acting is somehow worse than Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" but it isn't even bad in a funny way, it's just bad. The most remarkable part of this movie is that Amazon allowed them to price it at $5, which is $5 too much. Do yourself a favor and listen to me: Save your time, save your money, the correct rating for this movie is 1/10, not the absurd high rating it currently has.

Clearly the majority of these reviews are planted by people involved with DBS Films. How do I know this? Because they keep mentioning DBS Films. Unless it's Blumhouse or A24, most people don't know what production company made what they just watched. Yet 75% of the rave reviews mention DBS Films. (They also mention "good acting" and "fast-paced", and neither of those things are in evidence.) DBS Films is "fan-driven", which means a whole bunch of people who have no concept of how to make horror films are treated as "quality monitors" in the process of making these films. Because these people are given a little "ownership" of these generic projects - oh, the number of films they have done with "Forest" or "Haunting" in the title! - they feel they have a stake in its outcome, which causes them to rush to sites like this to gush over whatever dreck they "made happen". What is this supposed to accomplish? Will horror fans see a garbage movie and be fooled by these reviews? Of course not. The only things these reviews have done is make this horror fan remember the name DBS Films so I know to never watch one of their amateurish movies again.

Seems everyone involved has written a review giving this poorly made film a high score. The storyline is weak, the dialogue is childish, and the acting is abysmal. Nothing happens for most of the movie, and when it does it's not scary of surprising. Annoying teens in a house (not a cabin) do the exact opposite of what they're told not to do. The "special" effects aren't special, and the ending is laughable. Not clever or different, just low budget and poorly constructed. A waste of the cost of renting this boring, predictable, drawn out mess. Felt like a bunch of friends decided to make a movie, but shouldn't have.

Overall Forest of Death was a solid indie horror film. It had good cinematography, music, makeup, acting, etcetera. I just thought it was well done overall. Though, with any movie there were downsides. I thought that there was too much "downtime" with nothing really happening, just music montage-type scenes. One scene would have been fine, but it just seemed like a filer. I also wish we saw more of the monster's true form, we are given brief glimpses of it, and it looks great, but I just wish there was more of it. Other than that, I enjoyed it and can't wait for the release of their next project.